For the second time in less than two weeks, city police found themselves strategically stationed outside a building wondering if the man inside was going to hurt himself or someone else.

The first time, the intense standoff with an armed man happened at a hair salon July 28. The man had a knife and had taken a woman hostage.

The second time began late Thursday night and ended in the early morning hours of Friday. The man had a gun and police feared he was going to injure himself.

In each case, Canton SWAT officers were called. The first standoff ended in the death of Shane Allen Ryan, 28, of Canton.

The second standoff ended in a shootout, with police taking Steven P. Bubenchik Jr., 40, of Massillon, into custody. He’s being held in the Stark County Jail on three counts of attempted murder, having weapons under disability and receiving stolen property, according to Sgt. J.J. DiLoreto

FRIDAY MORNING SHOOTOUT

No one was injured when three Massillon police officers were shot at during the standoff in the 700 block of Geiger Avenue SW, Massillon police said.

The department received the call around 11:30 p.m. Thursday from Bubenchik’s estranged wife. The woman was concerned he was going to harm himself, DiLoreto said.

Officers responded to the home but couldn’t find anyone there.

The woman called back later, adamant that a man was in the house and was going to hurt himself, so officers contacted the man’s parents and returned to the home to meet them there.

“The father told the officer in charge that the son is not real fond of police presence,” DiLoreto said.

The parents asked police to leave, to see whether they could coax their son out of the house. Officers drove down the street but, after 15 minutes, could see the family wasn’t making any progress, so they returned.

A little after 1 a.m. Friday, the father gave an officer permission to enter the home, so he crawled through an open window off the porch and made his way to the door to let the other officers inside.

“At that point, a shot rang out,” DiLoreto said.

The officer bailed out the window and several more shots were fired by someone in the house. Police assumed a defensive position as shots continued to be fired, blowing out the windows of two cruisers.

A man ran out of the house, and officers attempted to subdue him, thinking it was the shooter, but the gunfire didn’t stop, DiLoreto said.

NEIGHBORS TAKE COVER

Chris DeOrio said he and his wife looked out the window to see police officers converging on a neighbor’s home. He saw officers approaching the home from the rear, and he heard gunshots and saw the officers retreating and taking cover.

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The couple just moved to the neighborhood in December.

“It’s a pretty quiet, reserved neighborhood and that is why we bought a house here,” he said.

Melvin Britton and his neighbor were playing video games when they noticed the city police on the street three different times.

Britton said they were on the front porch when they saw a police officer enter the house through a window. When the officer swung open the front door, Britton said he heard four gunshots.

“We scattered,” he said. “The cop told us to get in the house.”

Britton said his wife and 7-year-old son were asleep at his house. He jumped over the railing of the neighbor’s front porch and ran inside his house.

“As I closed the door I heard eight, nine more shots,” he said.

His phone rang. It was city police warning him about the standoff and instructing him and his family to go to their basement.

Britton said he took his wife and frightened son to their neighbor’s basement to wait out the danger.

Massillon police and Canton SWAT officers were stationed in an upstairs bedroom of the home — their weapons aimed at the house across the street where Bubenchik was thought to be, Britton said.

“It was nuts,” said Deborah Cowan who lives in the house. “There were snipers in my son’s bedroom. It was freakin’ crazy.”

FRESH MEMORY

It was 11 years ago to the day that Massillon police were involved in another shootout during which an officer died. And though more than a decade had passed since the death of Eric Taylor following a police chase, it was fresh in the minds of some officers Friday morning.

“It certainly was a close call,” said Det. Bobby Grizzard, who spent some of Friday digging bullets out of neighbor’s homes and collecting other evidence from the scene.

At least one bullet was found in Taylor Little’s home. Little, 15, said her family had moved in just four days earlier.

“This is such a great neighborhood,” she said, despite what she had witnessed the night before.

Fourteen-year-old Baylee Paulson was nearly asleep when she was disturbed by gunshots that she thought was coming from a TV.

Paulson saw the police cruisers. And then she saw a man in the upstairs side window of a house across the street. She could hear him talking to police.

The Canton SWAT team was trying to negotiate with the man who had been shooting at them with a 9mm Glock 17. DiLoreto said the gun was stolen from Summit County and that the shooter had an 18-round magazine.

Paulson said police were trying to calm the man who was accusing them of breaking into his house and violating his Second Amendment rights.

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“Yeah, you have rights, but you don’t have the right to shoot at a police officer,” the teen said.

After about two hours, Paulson said, the man came to the front porch and allowed officers to handcuff him.

“They (police) did their job and they did it right. Now the neighborhood is safe for now,” Paulson said.